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 CHAPTER XXVI

LAST DAYS IN ANGORA: EXCURSIONS, CONVERSATIONS, PICNICS—HAIDAR BEY'S PARTY

Angora, certainly, carries one back to the centuries before Christ; although we now realise that life was by no means without its luxury in those bygone days. As the houses of Pompeii were warmed by hot air behind the walls, and the baths were not only hygienic but luxurious, it would puzzle one to find what now remains in Angora from the comfortable period of Augustus. There is also a prehistoric atmosphere about Smyrna, or as it was once wittily expressed: "Since its deliverance from Greeks and Armenians, it has the charm of Sodom and Gomorrah after the fire."

But every day I am more at a loss to imagine where the thirty thousand inhabitants of Angora are living to-day. I have seen some of them in their charmingly improvised houses, made homelike by the marvellous carpets of the East; but, as one always goes back to one's first love, I give up the problem, and return to talk with the "élite" at the Assembly.

One day I found the Director of the Angora Press, Aga Oglou Ahmed Bey, in his tasteful little ante-*room, and learnt that he, too, found it hard to forgive the recent policy of Great Britain. He repeated, also, the note of despair I hear so often: "Whatever we do is wrong.

"Yet," he added, "had our movement originated in America, we should have had the whole world at our feet. All growing nations have been allowed to separate Church and State. We have, indeed,